Job: SENIOR SOLUTION MANAGER Job

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Job Category: Technical Service and IT
Location: Redmond, WA, US
Job ID: 841231-114600
Division: IT

Description
If this is you, read on, we want Talented IT/Business professional who loves complex and high stakes challenges.
A solution manager who is at home cross collaborating with multiple stakeholders to define current and future state business processes, identifying issues and risks, suggesting mitigation strategies and driving towards technology based solutions.
A solution manager who is determined to succeed by driving timely delivery of end-to-end IT solutions that will enable and enhance Product Data Mastery processes for Microsoft products across the globe.
An experienced IT professional practiced in both business strategy development and related technology solutions.

The Release & Product Solutions group is responsible for driving thought leadership and execution excellence of one of the most impactful IT spaces across all of Microsoft. The group is at the center of the essence of what Microsoft does - globally launch and release devices, services and software, to billions of customers and channel partners. This group owns and drives end to end solutions to support our critical release processes and increase the security, consistency, and flexibility of the full range of Product Release and Launch Services. They do this through working with key business clients and IT groups to define and build end to end process and IT solutions. The group works closely with business owners to gather customer requirements, translate them into clear compelling business cases and requirements documents, and then implement them to deliver solutions.

This particular position manages the end-to-end delivery of IT projects within time and budget allocated per fiscal year. In particular, in this position, a solution manager will act as an interface and solution owner working to define the strategy and tactics for delivering multi-year programs specifically in the Product & Product Launch space. A program is defined as multiple, interrelated projects (typically more than two but fewer than 10) or initiatives that span a complete solution. This role includes facilitation of IT planning and estimating as well as managing business requirements and ensuring the IT team delivers on the agreed requirements. It also requires attention to detail while still being able to see the big picture and work with the business to drive a strategy which optimizes the IT investment.

As a Solution Manager this person will be responsible for:

Collaborating with business partners to find alternatives and solutions to business challenges. This includes seeking out systems solutions (either internal to MS or external 3rd party solutions) that can be leveraged to meet business requirements.
Engaging the business client early and effectively building solid relationships and pushing IT value upstream as key business direction is being set.
Identifying, understanding, negotiating and documenting business requirements with various groups within Microsoft.
Facilitation of the IT planning and estimating phase with a full understanding of our ITLC methodology.
Managing the delivery of business cases, scope and requirements documents, use-case documentation, test plans, and rollout communications .
Developing and managing direct relationships with key stakeholders and subject matter experts to ensure the business solutions are aligned with their goals and priorities, and how process automation through IT solutions will help them reach their goals. 
Balancing the customer’s requirements with technical constraints (e.g., application size, network bandwidth, hardware/software/equipment selections) to ensure that the value of the project is realized. Clearly understanding, articulating and documenting existing "as-is" systems & business architecture and defining strategy for "to-be" architecture.
Recommending systems and business best practices across Operations and driving adoption to ensure consistency of systems solutions.
Exercising independent judgment in development methods, techniques, architectures and standards for obtaining solutions. Ensuring scalability and international capabilities of technology.
Creating and maintain a cohesive, coordinated plan to deliver solutions that meet the stakeholders priorities within budgetary and program requirements.
Budget management - Defining and gaining agreement on a project budget - ensuring project tracks to the budget.
Providing in-depth business & technical strategy for systems solutions, identify business gaps and correlate to potential solutions. 
Driving the prioritization process by which decisions are made around the final project scope.
Executing on project plans and assisting others in executing on project plans across the various groups.
Coordinating User Acceptance Testing.
Making scope/schedule/resource (including budget) trade-off decisions with little or no guidance.
Ensuring line of business priorities and IT capabilities (technology and resources) are aligned.
Analyzing and documenting requirements and use of appropriate techniques to refine, decompose, review and validate requirements. Ensuring requirements are traceable, well communicated and aligned to the overall business or solution vision. 
Demonstrating a sound understanding of how the overall business solution is positioned, deployed and supported globally. Evangelizing business benefits to IT and influencing project team priorities as well as to resolve user issues. 
Communicating and building consensus with other groups (internal customers, vendors, external customers, senior technical/manager levels and executive management) regarding the solution and options available to implement it. 

Requirements/Qualifications and Previous Work and Related Experience (including educational requirements):

Excellent documentation skills to build vision and scope, BRD’s, UAT’s, Communication plans, Training plans and presentations. 
Very strong project/program management skills deploying large-scale cross enterprise IT systems implementations within the SDLC in a fast based unstructured environment because of the end to end nature of the Solution Management responsibilities. 
Strong negotiation and consensus building skills when dealing with internal customers, stakeholders and team members. 
Has built credible customer relationships both in immediate team and across multiple customer groups. 
Can identify business issues and develop risk mitigation strategies.
Sound understanding of IT technology concepts. Must have a good understanding of software architectures, MS products, development tools, etc. This individual also needs to be a strong leader who can focus on the vision and strategies of the group while managing the tactical components of running the daily business.
Ability to deal with the ambiguity associated with working in a fast paced and changing environment.
Exceptional communication, problem solving and cross-group collaboration skills.
Demonstrated expertise using written & verbal communication skills to distill technology projects into understandable and compelling executive level presentations.
Ability to recognize and resolve conflict.
Bachelor’s degree in computer science or related field of study for software development and project/program management preferred. 
Master’s degree preferred, Six Sigma and PMP certification each a plus.
Five to eight years software development related experience.


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